Electronic systems and circuits have made a significant contribution towards the advancement of modern society and are utilized in a number of applications to achieve advantageous results. Numerous electronic technologies such as digital computers, calculators, audio devices, video equipment, and telephone systems have facilitated increased productivity and reduced costs in analyzing and communicating data in most areas of business, science, education and entertainment. The manner in which the electronic devices perform operations can have a significant impact on the performance and end results. However, traditional attempts at accurately analyzing impacts associated with different aspects of how a device operates are often limited and can be very complex and complicated.
As process dimensions shrink (e.g., with advancing semiconductor process generation, etc.), it usually becomes more and more difficult to consistently reproduce the same exact pattern. Process variability can cause significant yield fallout leading to wasted silicon. Via and contact variations are a significant cause of yield loss as they are very challenging to print and typically require very fine alignment between metal and via/contact layers. Via resistance measurement structures have been designed and implemented, but past traditional approaches generally require an analog resistance measurement (e.g., directly by oscilloscope, through a four-point probe approach, other methods, Kelvin techniques, etc.) or are very limited digital attempts (e.g., zero or infinite resistance, only detect opens, etc.) and usually involve extremely large number of vias (e.g., million vias, etc.). Since each wafer can have hundreds of chips and multiple via layers (e.g., up to a dozen or more, etc.), traditional attempts at more detailed or exhaustive measurement is usually very difficult and can involve signification costs.